However, Appeals Court Decided That Longer Statute Of Limitations Applied To Attorney’s Fees Request As An Independent Claim Under IDEA.
In the end, parents likely were sorely disappointed over the reversal of an attorney’s fees award for their Asperger’s Syndrome-suffering son under circumstances where he was entitled to the preparation of an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) at public expense under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) but where their son was not determined to need special education services.
However, the Ninth Circuit had to confront some legal issues in reversing the fee recovery in Meridian Joint School Dist. No. 2 v. D.A., No. 13-35329 et al. (9th Cir. July 6, 2015) (published), ultimately giving deference to the plain meaning of the fee-shifting statute.
The fee-shifting statute at issue was 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(3)(B), providing that attorney’s fees may be awarded “to a prevailing party who is the parent of a child with a disability,” defined in section 1401(3) as a child who needs special education and related services.
The first issue to be faced was whether the parents’ attorney’s fees request was timely. After determining that IDEA did not contain a limitations period governing the parents’ fees claim, the Ninth Circuit followed the reasoning in Ostby v. Oxnard Union High, 209 F. Supp. 2d 1035, 1042 (C.D. Cal. 2002), which preferred the view that an IDEA fees claim was an independent action so as to invoke much longer deadlines for filing a fee request.
The next issue was whether parents prevailed, but they certainly did given the findings that their son was entitled to an IEE at public expense, which altered the legal relationships between the parties.
The last issue, the most wrenching for parents, was the Ninth Circuit’s consideration of the section 1415(i)(3)(B) disability language. It followed the approach of the Fifth Circuit in T.B. v. Bryan Independent School Dist., 628 F.32d 240, 244-245 (5th Cir. 2010) which found the plain statutory language prevented a fee recovery because the parents’ son did not meet the “disability/special education services” requirement—an equitable result found distasteful to the district judge but not enough to surmount legislative language of a much narrower nature in the appellate court’s view.